Today's Boston Globe provides some silly lubral scaremongering about Donald Trump. A piece under the headline The GOP must stop Trump is accompanied by a PDF of a Boston Globe frontpage as it would look, in the mind of the writers, should Trump win the presidency.

The top headline of the envisioned front page says "Deportations To Begin".

The Globe writers should for once start reading their own newspaper. Under Barack Obama, which the Globe supports, deportation happened all along and the government increased the numbers as well as the deportation personal.

The Obama administration is openly and unapologetically stepping up efforts to find and deport unaccompanied children and families who arrived in the U.S. in the 2014 surge of illegal crossings. ... Homeland Security officials have kept a wary eye on the border since more than 68,000 unaccompanied children and roughly as many people traveling as families, many fleeing widespread violence in Central America, were caught crossing the border illegally in 2014. The effort to step up enforcement against families and young immigrants started in the midst of a new wave of such immigrants.

Obama increased deportation efforts. But the Globe is now scaremongering that Trump may begin deportations? How does that fit?

Another stupid headline on the fake Trump front page says "U.S. soldiers refuse orders to kill ISIS families". Should that indeed happen it would be a very welcome surprise. Obama has ordered hundreds if not thousands of drone and air-strikes on al-Qaeda and ISIS "terrorists" which have killed not only the targets but also their families. Obama admitted that these murderous strikes happen without any due process. Despite the very murky legality of these strikes under national and international law no U.S. soldier is know to have refused orders to take part in them.

President Obama, and certainly Hillary Clinton, are more hawkish than Trump on issues of foreign policy and war. They both oppose illegal immigration just as Trump does.

It is certainly legitimate for the Globe as a more liberal paper to oppose Trump. But to do so on points where their own preferred politicians are just as bad is silly.

Hmm. Seems like the sham article could have been written just about any time. The reality is that the US has been disrupting lives for a long time. Really, the only difference between what has been going on and the 'projection' of what might happen is that under Trump the elites would be included in the potential massacre. I can't say that I find the disruption of the elites all that bothersome. What bothers me about the article is that it is an attack on Trump (who certainly deserves it), but there is, so far, no similar futuristic article about the potential Clinton presidency. Makes me wonder if that is because writers know that the potential for a nuclear war with her is real. Bernie will capitulate to the oligarchs and that will be no news. Cruz ... oh, yeah him.

good stuff b! keep on shining a light on the msm's ongoing bullshite... who pays for these articles to be publicized? that is always what i want to know and what is generally never said in any of it... if a newspaper is going to pass off a supposed story line, i wish they would tell us who is paying for it, or is it just that these papers and media outlets are bought and paid for?

i look at articles in the msm as paid advertising, regardless of whether i ever find out who paid for it..

The Boston Globe effort - whose truth content may not differ to much from the newspapers standard one - only shows the establishment fear a president Trump could in some way leave the neocon rails of the us foreign policy. Realistically nobody can say what a president Trump would do, not even Trump himself. Seen from the outside there is no good choice to make in the forthcoming elections. No candidate out there mentally and ideologically strong enough to avoid a devastating war with China.

There's something so cynical/(naive?) about running a headline like "Deportations To Begin". From this 2013 article, "At current rates, President Obama is on track to deport more people in his first six years as President than all deportations prior to 1997."

The Globe insinuates that Trump can raise tariffs all by himself, which is untrue. From the linked editorial, "The Republican Party’s standard deserves to be hoisted by an honorable and decent man, like Romney or Ryan." I think the editorial board needs to return to school if it believes Ryan or Romney to have such character traits.

Same with Trump saying he would stop Muslems coming to the US, or building a fence between US and Mexico.

The way worse current racist criminal actions of European Leaders, has already said it was going to bomb asylum seeker boats, and they were they are banning - mostly Muslim - asylum seekers entering Europe

The Party itself despises its own two leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a remarkable oddity just in itself. But there is good reason for it. Both of these candidates are so extreme and disastrous that they will almost certainly never be able to win a national election for the Republican Party.
~~~
The Republicans, however, have no one to blame but themselves. This is a crisis of their own creation. And it didn’t just happen overnight.
~~~
Just think of all the right-wing “superstars” who spew messages of anger and hate every single day throughout the land over this enormous megaphone. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Ben Shapiro, Dana Loesch, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, to name a few.
(and so on)

When Idiot Dubya was President, Central Asian friends traveled to the USA at will.

Since Obama, they have been repeatedly denied visas - every time - so many times - they gave up. They have had to pay for visa applications and were refused so they gave up wasting their money on the non refundable visa application fees.

The MSM reporting has ppl totally misinformed. The Obama Admin has been extremely and unjustly tough on legal immigration, while Dubya's was easy as pie.

Trump could win the general election. Cruz cannot. Undecideds, middle of the road, low information, and disenfranchised Democrats will not vote for the religious extremism of Cruz. These would vote for Trump simply because he is perceived as an outsider.

I think it perhaps just a bit disingenuous to say Trump is "continuing" Obama Administration policies.

I don't recall Obama saying he intends to deport all undocumented migrants. Nor has he bragged about his willingness to order torture far more brutal than any practiced previously, even under Bush the Younger. It is Mr. Trump that is bragging about the military's supposed willingness to obey his clearly unlawful orders.

Any port of false equivalence in a storm, no? Because all outcomes in November are all equally bad, right?

The Globe has been under the ownership of John W. Henry, owner of the Red Sox, since its sale by the NYT in 2013.

Trump has spoken highly of John Bolton. He will not push policy off the rails the neo-cons have already laid. There are too many folks too highly placed in industry, finance, and politics with a vested interest in the status-quo for The Donald to have his way on such a critical point. Like pretty much every word out of his mouth, it uttered to get the rubes to make the deal.

Trump is not against the Establishment or special interests. He is an Establishment special interest. He may reshuffle positions around the trough, but same parcel of hogs will have their snouts in it.

The fascist Wikipedia has about 100 pages about "Voting systems". Thousands of "political science" students have destroyed the world. Stop them and their monstrous Hillary candidates. Reject their lies and their bogus "mathematics". The election system can be repaired, despite their idiotic "theories" and faux "moral" demands. Stop the absurd "political silence" college courses, and the fake Kenneth Arrow Nobel Award.

Strategic simple score ("simple score") voting can be completely described in one short simple sentence: Strategically bid no vote at all (ignore them as if the did not exist), or strategically bid from five (5) to ten (10) votes to any number of candidates you wish (up to some reasonable limit, say 20 candidates), and then simply add all the votes up.

Of course, with no machines. NOTHING ELSE EVEN BEGINS TO WORK!

No more "Republicans". No More "Democrats".

End this descent into abject poverty. End it now.

We the people must live.

Drop your write-in vote on the table. Let the fiends stick it in their infernal machine. THEN REVOLT!!!!!

I want to adopt Trump as an Honorary Australian. He couldn't possibly be as facile, corrupt and untrustworthy as 90% of Terror Australis's bought-and-paid-for politicians.

Maybe Yankees should be asking themselves (and each other)...

Is he an Aussie, Lizzies, is he?
Is he an Aussie, is he, eh?
Is it because he is an Aussie
That he keeps youse busy, Lizzies?
Has he jazzy ways and does he
Make you go all fuzzy wuzzy?
Got you dizzy, has he, Lizzies?
Is he an Aussie, is he, eh?

This is significant departure from the topic d'jour, but I thought it might be a welcome change from all the election noise. Apologies if I'm breaching protocol here - still a newbie. The idea outlined below sort of coalesced in my head yesterday and I wanted to see if it held up under scrutiny.

The two reasons cited most frequently for western involvement in Syria are: (1) to support the "Greater Israel" project, and (2) elimination of opposition to a western-controlled pipeline that would reduce European dependency on Russia for energy. No doubt that Israel is salivating at the prospect of pointing their genocide machine at Syria to replicate the success of their Palestinian project. Similarly, both Europe and the GCC countries are heavily invested in minimizing Russia's role as the energy supplier to Europe.

I think that there is a deeper and more sinister motivation.

Some years ago, I read an excerpt from one of Arnold Toynbee's pieces that was published in the mid-50's (IIRC - can't find the link now... Can anyone else help?). In it, he argued that integrating Islam with the West was going to be problematic (impossible?) due to (a) Islam's prohibition against "usury" (i.e. charging interest on loans) and (b) fundamentalist nature of Islam makes it unlikely that the religion would ever reverse or soften its position on interest as Christianity did in the middle ages.

Besides threatening to dilute the bankster's interest revenue stream, the Islamic business model for finance is an existential threat to western banking.

My understanding is that, in lieu of borrowing money at some interest rate, Muslims basically forge partnerships between the guy with the business plan and the guy with the money. Then the interests of both parties in the deal are aligned and everybody stays honest. Better yet, your new partner may have ways to help the new business that you can't access or are unaware of.

Having owned a small business at one time, I know which system I'd prefer to use for my next start-up.

Viewed through the lens of Toynbee's observation, the purpose of non-stop war in the ME, extensive use of DU weapons, destruction of infrastructure (power, water, sanitation), and the engineered migration tsunami directed at Europe all become clear. The objective is to kick-off a massive genocide of Muslims that starts in Europe and spreads across the middle east. I think this will be a central component in the upcoming world war.

The Boston Globe will, of course, now take each and every other remaining candidate at their word and produce an equivalent PDF.

Correct?

I would shudder to think what the Cruz-themed PDF would produce, though I am certain that a PDF of future-president-Hillary would have to feature a profoundly-disturbing photo of donkey-fellatio flanked by Israeli flags.

After all, the Boston Globe would be taking those candidates "at their word", correct?

An equivalent Sanders-themed PDF would consist of a blank page.

How could it be otherwise, since the Boston Globe has shown every sign of refusing to listen to a single word that has been uttered by candidate-Sanders on the campaign trail.

And if they haven't been listening what he has said then they can hardly exercise the option to "take him at his word".

The Boston Globe is owned by the Lying Times(Slim,the Mexican oligarch).
20;Can you believe the clowns who hate Trump as much as the Zionists,but refuse to recognize that the the Zionists hate Trump.
The enemy hates Trump.Ergo,vote for Trump.
How else will will we turn course from the rocks of neoliberal slavery?

he Boston Globe is owned by the Lying Times(Slim,the Mexican oligarch).
20;Can you believe the clowns who hate Trump as much as the Zionists,but refuse to recognize that the the Zionists hate Trump.
The enemy hates Trump.Ergo,vote for Trump.
How else will will we turn course from the rocks of neoliberal slavery?

Posted by: dahoit | Apr 11, 2016 9:25:41 AM | 22

Much more likely is that the Judeo-Nazis are just pretending to hate Trump in order to get people to support him.

After all it worked a treat when Chuck Hagel was nominated as Def Sec. People that never normally would have supported such a man suddenly became all gung-ho for Chucky-boy.

Naturally when Hagel became Def Sec he did absolutely nothing that might have ever caused the Judeo-Nazis any discomfort, and indeed did quite a few things that would have made the Judeo-Nazis very happy indeed, thus proving that he was never any threat to their agenda in the first place and all the whining against him by Judeo-Nazi groups was mere theatre, in order to fool the gullible into supporting him, which they did in spades.

"President Obama, and certainly Hillary Clinton, are more hawkish than Trump on issues of foreign policy and war."

I wouldn't be sure of that. I read a recent article about Trump's advisors. It was a horrid list of neocons. It led me to believe his foreign policy would be no better and possibly worse than what we've seen for many decades. The only thing I like about the parasite is he seems to be sending a lot of the establishment into tantrums.

"The Globe insinuates that Trump can raise tariffs all by himself, which is untrue."

I think you may be wrong. Read about the "Chicken" tax that LBJ instituted by executive order (Proclamation 3564) in 1963/1964. Part of it is still with us today.

Official Slavery in the US was morphed into illegals, prison labor, and low-level part-time wage earners.

Without going into the black (here meaning under the radar) economy: drugs, prostitution, organised or opportunistic theft, child trafficking, low-level scams, all is very dependent on illegals, as they can be manipulated, coerced, and can’t back off from taking risks.

Muslim financial institutions charge interest: they simply don't call it interest. For example, in Saudi Arabia banks are allowed to charge a "commission" on loans as well as to take a percentage of equity in projects being financed.

The subject of energy pipelines and related geopolitical motives underlying stated foreign policy objectives might be interesting if properly developed. Unfortunately, you undermine the credibility of such suggestions when you surround them with crazy rantings about Israel, genocide of Muslims (whether in the Middle East or Europe), and World War Three.

@28 ep - actually ay @19 was pretty forthright in communicating how they perceive israels actions towards palestine.. if you want to challenge the idea of israel genocide of the palestinians, or wanting to take advantage of a broken syria - go for it.. i agree with ay fully and think your comment is more of the same bullshite i have come to expect..

"Genocide" is a much abused word these days, whether by FOX News claiming the genocide of Christians or Yasidis by ISIS, or you making silly remarks about the "genocide of the Palestinians".

Genocide is the systematic attempt to exterminate a people. Nothing Israel has done to the Palestinians remotely resembles this.

The Nazis attempted genocide. Some of the tribal fighting between Hutus and Tutsis resembled genocide. There may be other examples, but certainly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't one of them.

I don't believe in abusing such gravely serious language for political purposes. Similarly, I find the modern habit of comparing one's political enemies to Hitler or the Nazis or the Gestapo to be shameful and ridiculous, whether righr-wingers talking about the Obama administration or the federal government, or left-wingers talking about Donald Trump.

Thus Islam is once more facing the West with her back to the wall; but this time the odds are more heavily against her than they were even at the most critical moment of the Crusades, for the modern West is superior to her not only in arms but also in the technique of economic life, on which military science ultimately depends, and above all in spiritual culture-the inward force which alone creates and sustains the outward manifestations of what is called civilization.

What makes the Qur’anic prohibition of usury revolutionary in our time is a dawning realization that its exemplary universality can become the basis for moving beyond the current capitalist-socialist deadlock into an ethical transformation of society that empowers all peoples to justly share in a new world of sustainable livelihoods.

I'm a little unclear about how a religious ideology with a hard and fast distinction between believers and non-believers can "empower all peoples" in a sustainable world. They only way to get around the capitalist-socialist stalemate is "socialism or barbarism."

emil at 30

I share your view on the inappropriateness of labelling the Israelis activities in the West Bank and Gaza as "genocide." While their defense of the illegal settlements is marked by harsh brutality, the scale and end of their actions do not justify such a loaded description. They don't want to "exterminate" all the Arabs, or even just the Palestinians. They just want to left to enjoy quietly their ill-gotten gains.

And I also share your dislike of the all-too-free use of "fascist" to describe politics one dislikes. I'd go with "proto-fascist" for Trump; he and his followers may or may not make the transition from chauvinistic nationalism. Convention Hall Putsch, anyone?

...
"I don't believe in abusing such gravely serious language for political purposes. Similarly, I find the modern habit of comparing one's political enemies to Hitler or the Nazis or the Gestapo to be shameful and ridiculous, whether righr-wingers talking about the Obama administration or the federal government, or left-wingers talking about Donald Trump."
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | Apr 11, 2016 10:23:27 PM | 30

Ahem... abusing gravely serious language, for "Israeli" purposes is precisely what your comment was intended to do. The word Genocide has a deliberately(?) fuzzy meaning. In the extreme it can mean exterminating an entire class of people, united by a common cause, to prevent them from pursuing that cause. However, it is not necessary to kill people in order to thwart their dreams for the future and this is the course which the Jewish Occupiers of Palestine have chosen to follow ... Genocide Lite - the systematic destruction the natural right of Palestinians to determine their own future AND the criminalisation of any action deemed to further that aim. In the situation Jews have imposed upon them, Palestinians have no attractive foreseeable future and are effectively no longer "living" in the accepted meaning of the word.

In it, he argued that integrating Islam with the West was going to be problematic (impossible?) due to (a) Islam's prohibition against "usury" (i.e. charging interest on loans) and (b) fundamentalist nature of Islam makes it unlikely that the religion would ever reverse or soften its position on interest as Christianity did in the middle ages.

Actually that was racism typical of the older generation from Toynbee. "Islamic" banking, which avoids usury, has always existed. The idea of hileh, the "device" which gets you round the prohibition on interest, goes back to medieval times. It's far from enough to create a clash of civilisations. Islam is no more naturally fundamentalist than Christianity. I find the fundies in the States frightening.

It's more that you keep all your deepest hatred for your neighbour, not for the guy who lives on the other side of the world.

The objective is to kick-off a massive genocide of Muslims that starts in Europe and spreads across the middle east.

Yeah, there used to be that American joke (perhaps someone can quote the whole), that ends with the kid saying, 'Daddy, what's an Arab?'. Only an American could think that. Perhaps you haven't noticed what proportion of the world population Muslims are.

24;The hatred for Trump is exemplified by the Globe,Wapo and the Lying times who daily print garbage concerning Trump.They want no part of him,simply because he is an American,and not a slave of Zion,like all others.His wet kiss gave slim returns.
The sale to Henry;I never saw that,but of course,with the MSM committing financial suicide by printing what its readers don't want to hear,bad assets are sold.
And the hell bitch steps in racial doo doo,with NY mayor Deblasio,speaking of CP time(colored person),which the HB said was candidate caution.

30;Everything we know about WW2,and the Nazis,is filtered through the Zionists,who control the info system.I refuse to believe anything from the serial liars.
The Nazis were amateurs re the Zionists.The Zionist crimes are unsaid,at least in polite company,as they murder,steal and destroy the indigenous occupants of their stolen entity.Goebbels would have died for such propaganda.Actually he did.

OT/ep - genocide? looks like it to me ... - Clinton argues massacred babies were fighters
"On top of blaming Palestinians for Israel’s deadly violence, Clinton called into question the innocence of dead Palestinian civilians, arguing, “They often pretend to have people in civilian garb, acting as though they are civilians, who are Hamas fighters.” Maybe Clinton was referring to the 551 children Israel killed in Gaza, 68 percent of whom were under the age of 12. Or maybe she was talking about the 844 Palestinians that the Associated Press determined were killed in Israeli airstrikes on residential homes, including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5."

If Trump can't navigate his way through the half-baked obstacles being strewn in his path to the White House by a bunch of amateur careless-with-the-truth info-managers, then it's better that he discover that weakness now. But his record suggests that he can rise to any challenge and is unlikely to surrender without a spectacular fight. So the Boston Globe has (unwittingly) played to Trump's strength (enjoying a good brawl).

A clear implication where to take accounting lessons. Not from Bernie -- how much did he charge for his speeches anyway, no news items on that at all?

Daily News also accuses Bernie of accusing that Israel killed 10,000 Palestinians during a campaign in Gaza when, according to Daily News, Israel killed only 2,000. That is apparently true, he confused number of wounded with the number of killed. And he should take lessons from Hillary who did not mention any numbers but focused on assigning the blame. The weird thing is that Bernie ALSO blames Hamas but unlike Hillary he thinks that Israel "could do more" to kill less. One can be snide and quip that if he thinks that IDF could kill less, he should pay attention to how many were killed. But quipping about maiming civilians not what I intend.

My interpretation is that Sanders finds news from Israel to painful to follow. This is how he gets angry when the people at a meeting attack Israel, and why he has huge misgiving about the government of Israel and this is why he is so sketchy with the numbers. On human level I understand him, and he compares favorably to Clinton (who channels Elizabeth Báthory, an accomplished female in politics of Transylvania back in 16th century).

@EPufister and Doofus Maximus, Israeli genocide is just as obnoxious as the Nazi version for all its relaxed tempo. But Israel's biggest crime is just being there. And the entire world is supposed to accept a Wesphalian "State" based on a cult? A tribe? A supposed consanquinity of Lithuanian, New York, Montreal etc Jews to the ancient Prophets? Having suffered? Does not compute.

OT/ep - genocide? looks like it to me ... - Clinton argues massacred babies were fighters
"On top of blaming Palestinians for Israel’s deadly violence, Clinton called into question the innocence of dead Palestinian civilians, arguing, “They often pretend to have people in civilian garb, acting as though they are civilians, who are Hamas fighters.” Maybe Clinton was referring to the 551 children Israel killed in Gaza, 68 percent of whom were under the age of 12. Or maybe she was talking about the 844 Palestinians that the Associated Press determined were killed in Israeli airstrikes on residential homes, including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5."

Posted by: james | Apr 12, 2016 6:34:14 PM | 37

Well it's not like they have ever acted any differently.

From the very start the Judeo-Nazis have behaved, like . . . . you know . . . Nazis! -

"The massacre came in spite of Deir Yassin residents’ efforts to maintain positive relations with new Jewish neighbors, including the signing of a pact that was approved by Haganah, a main Zionist Judeo-Nazi paramilitary organization during the British Mandate of Palestine."

Re 36 (where dahoit wrote: "Everything we know about WW2,and the Nazis,is filtered through the Zionists,who control the info system... The Nazis were amateurs re the Zionists...")

Actually, we know a great deal about the Nazis from the Nazis themselves, both from hundreds of tons of obsessively kept paperwork, and from testimony under oath at Nuremburg and related war crimes trials. There was also ample eyewitness testimony from victims (including many non-Jewish Russians, Germans, French, Poles, etc.), not to mention American and Russian forces liberating concentration camps. All of this before the state of Israel even existed, and at a time when anti-Semitism in British and American command circles was rampant.

If you ever get tired of closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and ignoring the vast literature dealing with the subject, you might visit your local library, asking for a book by Eugen Kogon called (in its English language translation) The Theory and Practice of Hell. Kogon, a leftist political opponent (Christian-socialist) of the Nazis spent six years in Buchenwald, and narrowly managed to avoid shipment to Auschwitz on several occasions. If the book isn't on the shelf, it can easily be obtained at no cost through the inter-library loan program.

I don't know what background you claim, but the idea of yours that "the Zionists control the information system" is straight out of Nazi propaganda. It's also patently ridiculous, not to mention pig-ignorant. Besides, shouldn't you have included freemasons and papists in your conspiracy theory of media control?

About Trump: nativist/nationalist candidates often attract racist and fascist elements on the margins, first because they perceive elements of their own belief systems, and second because they hope to infiltrate and piggyback on the success of a large popular political movement. A much smaller version of the phenomenon can be found here at MoA, where crypto-fascists, attracted like moths to the flame of "left-wing" anti-Zionist chatter, show up posting comments calling President Obama a "porch-monkey" just to test the waters.

My guess about Trump himself is that he's playing the rubes and will prove to be a great disappointment to such followers if elected. He's far more cosmopolitan, and the barely concealed contempt he shows when mouthing his vague platitudes for the benefit of the yokels is almost amusing. If it doesn't undermine my earlier comments about facile and exaggerated comparisons, it does nevertheless bring to mind a quote from another infamous politician:

"The receptive capability of the masses is limited, their understanding small. On the other hand they have a great power of forgetting...When you lie tell big lies...in the primitive simplicity of their minds they fall victim to the big lies more readily than to the small lie."

Of course, this is just old-fashioned politicking, the art of which Trump has revived, to the surprise of the journalistic class, who seem puzzled by his ability to tell such lies repeatedly, and not only get away with it but thrive thereby.

Hamas and the Likud Party collude in the massacre (not genocide) of noncombatant Palestinians, each for its own political purposes.

Hamas fires rockets into Israel, not only to posture as an anti-Israeli military force and thus to attract funding and support from Arab governments and Iran, but also to provoke a military response from Israel that is indiscriminate and disproportionate, knowing full well that most of the victims of Israeli reprisals will be civilians. This fans hatred among Palestinian residents of Gaza, increasing popular support for an extremist militant group that wouldn't survive free and fair elections in a thriving peacetime economy. Hamas knows that this is militarily ineffective and only serves to harden Israeli resistance and to give Israeli hardliners excuses to hide behind.

The Israeli Likud coalition (which also depends on the support of some religious parties to maintain a governing majority) knows that it is in power solely because it is perceived as being strong on national security. So doing nothing in the face of repeated rocket attacks and the resulting public and media outcry, is not an option.

The Israeli government has copies of Hamas membership lists and could solve the problem, if not once and for all, then for a very long time, by going in with troops and digging the Hamas fighters out of their strongholds and homes. But this would also be politically problematic for two reasons.

First, it would expose Israeli infantry to very high casualties. In a society where the military is highly integrated into the general population and its social institutions, there is no way to play this down.

Second, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (Operation Peace For Galilee) revealed what happens when an army used to armored warfare with a conventional military enemy instead sees action in unconventional warfare in an urban theater where civilian casualties among women, children, and other noncombatants, whether inadvertent or not, must be witnessed up close by frontline Israeli soldiers.

Morale took a big hit. The reported rate of "psychiatric casualties" was 26 percent. The rate of battle-shock casualties was between two and three times higher than in the 1973 war. There were reports from the front that Israeli soldiers had begun to distrust accounts of the war broadcast by the official Israeli Army radio and began to listen to Radio Lebanon in English or Arabic to get a more accurate account of events. One prominent brigade commander, Eli Geva, was granted a personal meeting with the Chief of Staff and Prime Minister Begin, in which he stated that he would not kill women and children, which he thought would be inevitable if Israeli troops entered Beirut. He offered to resign his commission and was dismissed from the IDF. Another senior officer was dismissed after he wrote an article for Ha'aretz defending Geva. General Amram Mitzna, the officer in charge of the IDF Command and Staff College, tendered his resignation in disagreement over the conduct of the war. This was just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, from a military analytic standpoint, the Israeli army had to know that if Gaza was bombarded with heavy artillery stationed outside at the border, supplemented with airstrikes in densely populated urban areas, Hamas guerrilla fighters would not be the primary victims. Hamas operated in small, mobile units. They could move a truck mounted rocket launcher out, fire into Israel, then drive to a new location, or retreat into a parking garage or into an alley shielded by large buildings on both sides. Hamas fighters also had tunnels and other prepared positions. Civilians didn't.

But it's much easier (politically) to fight a video-game type war using area weapons like artillery from a distance. The Likud government pretends to be doing something. Hamas keeps firing rockets until they run out. Both sides then claim victory, until Hamas replenishes its stores and the next round starts. It's a cynical game that both sides play at the expense of civilians.

Like I told the troll "activist" you cribbed it from on the open thread -- That's Doofus Maximus, Tribune of the Plebians, to all you patrician scum.

Emil at 45 --

Well said. Trump will say anything to make his current deal. If he has to go 180 about for the next one, he can do that. I believe there is a certain end in mind with dehumanizing chatter of "slow motion genocidal Zio-Nazis."

I'm pretty sure that Likud doesn't want a Palestinian state by any means, because they've said so, among other places in their party platform. Hamas doesn't either, which is why they help Likud sabotage the peace negotiations by refusing to accept peace, offering at most a temporary armistice under terms they know will be rejected, meanwhile conducting terroristic rocket attacks to drive the point home.

If Israelis had a smart government, they would create and recognise a Palestinian state in the West Bank, where the PLO has already recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace agreements. They would use trade deals and subsidies to build up a thriving economy there, with plenty of quality affordable housing and jobs based on construction, trade, and derivative sectors. The PLO, which is in bitter rivalry with Hamas, would be glad to assist with security arrangements designed to keep Hamas bottled up. The Gaza economy would continue to tank by comparison, with massive migration from Gaza to the West Bank by ordinary citizens seeking a better life. When the Gaza strip became sufficiently depopulated, a plebiscite could be held to annex the territory under PLO governance, and with acceptance of peace with Israel a corollary subject to explicit public vote. Without a popular base, Hamas would only be marking time anyway, and would no doubt suffer many defections from its own ranks.

...
If Israelis had a smart government, they would create and recognise a Palestinian state in the West Bank, where the PLO has already recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace agreements. They would use trade deals and subsidies to build up a thriving economy there (etc,etc ad nauseum)
...
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | Apr 14, 2016 12:55:50 PM | 49

Conveniently "forgetting" of course, that Palestine had a thriving agrarian economy before Jews deliberately and systematically erased it.

Re 52: I love it when you introduce irrelevancies prefaced by "conveniently forgotten..." as if this entitles you to ignore the actual content of the comment you responded to and to change the subject into something else, rather than deal with the remarks actually made.

Re 53: I don't know what you mean by "Israel helped create Hamas". If you're suggesting that the Likud government likes to play the opposition against each other and strengthens different groups surreptitiously as part of a divide and conquer strategy, there may be something to that, though that is well short of the act of creation. Incidentally, I think the leaders of Hamas would be surprised and shocked to learn that their organization was created by Israel. Maybe you should write them a long letter explaining your brilliant counterintuitive theory.

In fact, your reply is nonresponsive even if we accept the much weaker hypothesis that Israel has on occasion surreptitiously encouraged Hamas against the PLO. What I said was, a smart government that is genuinely interested in the welfare of its own people would use a different kind of divide and conquer strategy, instead of waiting for Hamas to reform itself. That remains valid.

What constitutes an "agenda"? Having an opinion on a particular topic? What's your agenda? Why do you react with reflexive hostility? Why do you use these same formulaic expressions over and over? Are you even capable of discussing an issue on its merits? I get the feeling that I am interacting with defective, irrationally hostile robots. You tell me to go somewhere else, but the same sort of disease symptoms show up there. Why don't YOU stop posting comments? That would be far more productive and just. You're nothing but pernicious trash.

ep - giving the same talking points as the western msm could be rightly thought of as 'not having an agenda', but why the need to repeat the msm news spin here? sure looks like an obvious agenda to me... thanks for the last comment - that describes you to a tee..

@Hoarsewhisperer 51
Great read, tough to find these little pieces if the puzzle...add that to the list of Hitlers forgotten[1] history...up there with the heroics of disabling the banking cartel. It's annoying the school textbooks never gave a balanced viewpoint - not even close.